Elias Khoury - As Though She Were Sleeping

So you want to send my son off to Greece, God forgive you!

Wouldn’t that be better than seeing him die?

Why would he die?

Didn’t you tell me his brother Niqula means to kill him? Niqula should give him a bit of a scare to get him to change his mind, and meanwhile I’ll see to what we need to do.

What if he doesn’t change his mind? asked Saadeh.

Then he dies, said the nun.

He dies!

What can we do about it?

You mean, you’d approve?

No, I didn’t say that, but these things are the will of God.

And I lose my boys!

You won’t have lost more than you’ve lost already — is there anything more fearsome than unbelief like this? Leave Niqula alone to say what he wants and don’t put any pressure on him.

You mean, you don’t have any problems if a brother kills his brother?

Of course I do — Thou shalt not kill, says the Commandment. But that doesn’t mean a person knows how God’s will is going to work out. The Commandment says: Thou shalt not kill, and the Commandment said it a very long time ago, but people did not stop killing each another. Anyway, all people are brothers. Saadeh, that means when people kill, they are always killing brothers. But of course I’m against killing.

The nun pulled Saadeh forward by the hand and they knelt before the icon of Mar Ilyas. The nun murmured her prayers in the presence of the saint who stood erect in a fiery chariot holding up a flaming sword.

He is the one who will deliver your children to safety, Saadeh. Don’t be afraid.

Saadeh cried for most of the day. This woman whose solace was to spend almost all of her waking hours in the Convent of the Archangel Mikhail felt profoundly shaken and lost. Yes, in her prayers and her fasting and her devout hope for brotherly love, she believed in the power of true faith. But she despised the Jesuits because they spoke in Jesuit-speak and prayed in the Latin language, which she did not understand.

But it’s just like you, Mama — you pray in Greek and you don’t understand what the words mean, Salim protested.

No, we do understand, or even if we don’t understand the words, Greek touches the heart as it is spoken, and the heart is where we understand everything.

It’s not necessary that we understand the words of the prayer, said Salim. The Pope is the only one who truly understands. That’s why someone has to know seven languages — at least — to become Pope.

Shut your mouth and don’t say a word about that man! She made the sign of the cross as if seeking Satan’s protection from the fellow.

The storm Salim had set off dispelled quickly enough. After Niqula announced his intention to kill his brother, Salim never returned to the topic of entering the monastery. Milia was convinced that one day her eldest brother would simply disappear without a trace, having been swallowed up in a black robe in one of the Jesuit monasteries somewhere outside of Lebanon. That way the original sin would not really be committed and so Abel would not seek revenge on his brother Cain. For what was the meaning of the story if it became mere revenge? Had it been a matter of simple revenge, and had it worked, then no one would remember Abel and the story would have died a swift clean death.

No one knew why Salim changed. Was it the relationship with Frère Eugene or was it failing to pass his courses at the law school, or was it something else entirely?

Salim’s relationship with the Jesuit brother began with the Sunday school and the films and continued for a very long time. Salim started going to the summer camps which Eugene organized for the youth of the area. And then suddenly Salim came and announced that he had gotten a scholarship to study law at the Jesuits’ university and it would not cost his family a penny. But Salim seemed unable to bring his study of the law to a conclusion. He remained at the university for years, and whenever he was asked when he would become an avocato he would respond by saying that he was working and studying at the same time, and that had delayed his graduation. As for what he worked at and where, no one knew. It seems he failed at the law or was distracted by other activities. And then when he came to them with his Jesuit bombshell, everyone realized instantly that he had not been simply studying law after all. Probably he had even joined study sessions in Catholic theology. He told Musa that Frère Eugene had promised to get him a travel bursary to Rome so that he could continue his studies there, but only on condition that he would enter the monastic life.

Ten years had gone wasted, while Niqula and Abdallah worked in the father’s shop and then switched to the coffin business, and Musa went on with his studies, and Milia left school to become a homemaker. Salim just went on playing around with theology, as their mother said. Then he had the goodness to come and inform us he was going to become a monk! she groused. Thank God Haajj Niqula threatened him, said Milia — and she heard her mother’s voice coming out of her own throat, as if she had had no part in forming those words. There’s no doubt Frère Eugene was the root of this disaster, but we rid ourselves of one calamity only to fall into a new disaster.

The new disaster was the buried tale. Mansour listened carefully to the unfamiliar fragments that came his way. He became convinced that he had been in the wrong. Now he must give the story another burial out of fear for Milia’s neck, which had filled up with razor-thin red lines.

It didn’t bother me all that much, said Milia. A bridegroom, they said to me. Oh, a bridegroom, I said, and I accepted because what they said to me was accept . Then he disappeared and we understood that Salim had dragged him off so that he could marry Angèle. Exactly how it all happened no one seems to know. What did I have to do with whether Salim could marry his girl? I certainly don’t know! All I know is that Angèle had a sister, an older sister, named Odette, and that their father wouldn’t hear of Angèle marrying until her older sister was married. So, Salim convinced my fiancé to agree to the scheme, and the two men disappeared and went to live in Aleppo and got work in the woodworking shop owned by the girls’ uncle Jacques Estefan. So, instead of a brother killing his brother, a brother killed his sister. In a word, it seems the blame for it all falls on my brother — everyone said so. I said, No, maybe it is Najib’s fault. Maybe he’s the one who made it all happen. Najib was smarter than Salim and he didn’t fear his Lord. My brother’s just a poor simple fellow trying to get along, I’m sure of that. But no one believed me and all of them went on saying it was Salim who was to blame. So I believed them — what could I do? And I started saying the same thing they said. Then the nun came and said, It’s time to put this business to rest — one scandal but it’s the size of two. The girl’s exposed and so is her brother. The scandal over the girl is nothing unusual. She was engaged and the engagement was broken off.

So, Milia went on, at this point the nun raised her voice loud enough for the neighbors to hear her next words: And she’s as much a virgin as Our Lady Maryam, peace be on her name! And that won’t change. Then the nun lowered her voice again to say that Salim had gone and married into the Roman Catholics and he’d become one of them. Well, with him, out of the frying pan into the fire, she commented.

Lower your voice, shrieked Saadeh.

It was the only time Saadeh ever raised her voice to the nun. In fact, no one had ever even heard Saadeh’s voice in the presence of the nun. Saadeh always made herself as inconsequential and obsequious as she could before the nun, slumping over, swallowing her voice as though she had developed laryngitis, and speaking only when necessary and in a nearly inaudible murmur. But on that disastrous day Saadeh’s emotions were fixed on her daughter, dreading to think what Milia’s future might be. The business of Salim was not so earthshaking, after all, nor the two women whom he had married. That’s what she said — that he had married two women — and then she hastily retracted it. See — look what I’m saying! But it’s my heart talking, it’s as if he kidnapped his sister and killed her. People are despicable!